ATTENDANCE

St. Paul’s Primary School is working in partnership with parents to improve school attendance and punctuality. We would like to congratulate the many parents who make sure their children attend school regularly and on time.

It is a parent’s legal responsibility to ensure their children receive appropriate education. Failing to send your child to school regularly or without good reason is a criminal offence.

Absence disrupts the education of the individual pupil and the whole class. You may be aware that children who do not attend school regularly:

do not achieve well in exams

find it difficult to maintain friendships

are more likely to become involved in crime at a later stage

miss out on opportunities to experience a broad and exciting curriculum

Absence can only be authorised by the Head Teacher/Deputy Headteacher, within the boundaries set by the Education (Pupil Registrations) (England) Regulations 2006.

Please remember that parental illness, shopping, visiting family, truancy, not wanting to go to school, alleged bullying (speak to school immediately to resolve the issue) are not acceptable reasons to be absent. All of these will be recorded as unauthorised absence, including if your child arrives at school after the close of registration at 9am. Leave in term time will only be authorised in exceptional circumstances.

Legal action that may be taken include:

Issuing penalty notices

Taking parents to court for unauthorised absence

Taking parents to court for persistent unauthorised absence

Being taken to court could result in you having a criminal record.

How does your child compare?

Attendance during one school year

Equals this number of days absent

Which is approximately this many weeks absent

Which means this number of lessons missed

90%

19 days

4 weeks

100 lessons

80%

38 days

8 weeks

200 lessons

70%

57 days

11.5 weeks

290 lessons

Details of your child’s attendance % will be included in the Annual Report to Parents which will be sent at the end of this term.

School begins at 8:40am each morning. If your child arrives at 8:50am he/she will have missed 10 minutes of early morning learning activity. This equates to 50 minutes a week or 3 ½ hours per month. If your child arrives after 9am this will be marked as unauthorised absence.

Frequent absence can add up to a considerable amount of lost learning and can seriously disadvantage your child.

If your child’s level of absence is of serious concern you will receive a letter advising you about improving attendance and/or punctuality. After this, any further unauthorised absence may result in the School and the Local Authority taking action.Attendance which falls below 90% will be referred to the Educational Welfare Officer.

We will improve attendance by making it clear within the school and local community that unauthorised absence is not acceptable.

Again, we would like to thank those parents who make sure their child is attending school regularly and on time each day and are therefore benefiting fully from their educational opportunity.